The Tony Williams Lifetime - Disc of the day

The Tony Williams Lifetime
Emergency!

(Polydor, 1969)

Fusion’s equivalent of Hendrix’s Are You Experienced?

Emergency! captures drummer Tony Williams, guitarist John McLaughlin and keyboard eccentric Larry Young (whose Hammond anchors the sound) creating the very blueprint for the entire jazz-rock genre. Recorded in two days in New York, the freeform jams of Sangria For Three and Carla Bley’s Vashkar ripple with the same acts of joyous musical abandonment that characterise Hendrix’s onstage improvisation. Indeed, the entire set’s live feel is made more thrilling by the audible buzz of the amps from the rapacious opening title track onwards. While the trio would enjoy little success during their initial time together (the jazz establishment baulked at the intensity and heaviness on offer), Miles Davis was so impressed that he sought to employ Lifetime as his backing band, an offer that his former charge Williams declined. The influence of Emergency!, however, is evident on Miles’s Bitches Brew, released some months later. McLaughlin too would take Lifetime’s creative spirit further, quitting the band after their second album Turn It Over (featuring Jack Bruce on bass) and forming the Mahavishnu Orchestra. While Williams would put together further incarnations of the band, Emergency! remains an outstanding debut whose restless energy is as urgent as its title suggests.

Phil Alexander

Posted by Danny_Eccleston at 6:00 AM GMT 03/01/2008